Archive for July, 2012

I was in the middle of working yesterday when a funny memory came to my head; must have been something I heard on the TV or the radio.

It was from years and years ago when I was a kid still living in my old neighborhood, which, by the way, looks nothing like it did between the sweet and tender, but perhaps not so innocent ages of 1 and 25. I was just through there the other night giving a friend of ours a tour of my old stomping grounds.

Anyway, it was around Halloween (and by this point, if my sister is reading this she already knows where I’m going with this) and I was out gallivanting, either playing Hot Wheels with my friend Roger, or getting into some mischief or other with Stevie or perhaps even coming home from the A&P. Maybe I was buying a box of Mr. Bubble or a Spanish Bar cake.

Recently I’ve been seeing these big SUV truck things that are brown or a deep burgundy with a white roof, I think it’s the Toyota FJ Cruiser, and I noted how it reminded me of the Jane Parker Spanish Bar cake we used to buy at the A&P. I also remember that it in my family it ended up being called a “dried grape cake” because my sister didn’t like the idea of the cake having raisins in it, but she enjoyed the dried grapes. As a matter of fact, just the other night, after dinner with my mother, Ariel and I drove to the only A&P I know of in the area to get one and lo and behold… none to be had. So, I don’t know if they still make them or not, but this store didn’t have them. And I didn’t want to spend much time in there as the “element” was on the seedy side and I thought, gosh, look what’s become of the integrity of the A&P, much like you’re probably thinking gosh, what’s become of the point of this blog? But really, don’t you see how one could remind me of the other?

So, I’m walking home and it’s dark out and I pass this one particular house where the people were, let’s say unique (colorful, odd, strange, screwy, peculiar, scary are all acceptable adjectives) and I noticed someone sitting in a chair on the flat roof of the carport and from the size of his head, it looked like a huge pumpkin. I remember the hairs on my arms stood up from the shock of the sight but then it didn’t surprise me since that was the house on the block that was usually the target on mischief night so, he, BG (that’s all I’ll give you) was probably sitting vigil atop the garage guarding against hurling eggs or whatever.

I ran home and was hysterical telling the story of how BG was sitting on his roof dressed as a pumpkin. We all laughed and laughed. And I have a sneaking suspicion by now we’re still laughing.

Well, as it turns out, it really was a stuffed “scarecrow” of sorts, propped up in a lawn chair on the garage with a huge pumpkin head; a bonafide Halloween decoration. Whoops!

Some of you may have already seen how I/we started our summer vacation by tearing down the old “patio” in the back forty down by the river. But what Facebookers didn’t see was the pristine image of when we first put it a little over 8 years ago. We put it up to have a nice semi private place to host outdoor parties, but after the first few it proved to be more of a chore than it seemed to be worth. Taking stuff down there was no big deal, with the promise of a fun-filled afternoon but afterwards, having to lug it all back to the house, quickly became a deterrent for too many more future parties down by the river.

The long and short of it, nature had started to reclaim the area and in spite of my/our (not so successful) attempts at keeping it at bay, it just got the better of us and we declared this past Saturday the day to dismantle it. In a little over 5 ½ hours we got the job done as far as we could go. The 5 plus yards of pea gravel is being handed over to the big boys, our landscapers, who are better equipt at removing it, and cleaning it to their satisfaction for safer future mowing. It was a little disappointing to come to the realization that was a bigger job than we could handle, in a timely fashion but I’m a big boy and am coming to grips with certain limitations.

Enjoy the sad progression of the patio. It kind of reminded us of that TV show on the History Channel called Life After People, where they chronicled a certain aspect of life from one day to thousands if not millions of years after humanity was gone from the earth.

In all that jungle overgrowth, Ariel uncovered a baby pine tree that he insisted on keeping.

What I couldn’t come to grips with a certain 8-legged creature I came across while moving some slate pavers. You can look it up for yourself if you want to see what it looks like. I saw it in person and then had to quickly search for it so I could find out what it’s called and I don’t really want to look at it much further than that. It’s called a woodlouse spider. You know how spiders and I don’t really gel very well and when this thing quickly appeared out of nowhere as I was reaching for a stack of pavers, I literally became nauseous. You know that feeling just before you upchuck, when your throat sort of closes or it feels like your tongue is sliding down your own throat? Once it was gone, thanks to Ariel swatting it with his gloved hand (which added to my nausea) I was fine, except for trying to get my tongue out of my throat. But moments later I was recording the actions of a coiled up snake as close as my legs would let me bend. Go figure.

Now, today, on my first official day of vacation, I’m waiting to hear from my exterminator people who I need to come and dust for the wasps who are making a home in the eave of my second floor bathroom dormer. I’ve had a few wasps in the past several weeks actually in the bathroom and it’s probably from the eave somehow.